1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an interface circuit for a compact disk (CD) read-only memory (ROM) drive and, more particularly, to the interface circuit for an Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE)-type CD-ROM drive which can be connected to a personal computer using an IDE interface as the hard disk drive interfacing standard.
The instant application is based on Korean Patent Application No. 93-24851, which is incorporated herein by reference for all purposes.
2. Discussion of Related Art
The conventional CD-ROM drive interface requires an interface capable of communicating between a CD-ROM drive and a personal computer. The interface is usually accomplished by attaching an independent CD-ROM drive interface board or another type of common interface board, for example, a Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI) standard bus circuit, to an Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) connector on the personal computer. Thus a special interfacing board is necessary. Moreover, it is inconvenient to attach the board to the ISA connector. Potential applications for the computer are also decreased since the interface board occupies one slot space on the motherboard of the computer.
It will be noted that in the conventional personal computer system, two IDE hard disk drives (HDDs), one acting as a master and the other as a slave, are connected directly via a 40-pin connector to an IDE interface connected to the ISA connector or to an installed IDE connector on the motherboard of the computer.
Since personal computers generally employ only one hard disk drive, one of the IDE interface connectors has been wasted.